Scottish News

My favourite quote at present:

“Character, in the long run, is the de­ci­sive factor in the life of an in­di­vid­ual and of nations alike.” – Theodore Roo­sevelt

In some year, I don’t know when, but def­i­nitely quite a long time ago indeed, Scot­land became part of England. This might have had some­thing to do with King James. Anyway, the point is, Scot­land didn’t exist prop­erly for quite a long time. Through­out this whole period of not ex­ist­ing the Scots whined and whined about their sit­u­a­tion until, in 1997, Scot­land got given its own par­lia­ment by Tony Blair. Ripper. Scotland, as an almost-country, also has its own cricket team, soccer team and soft drink that tastes re­mark­ably like Creamy Soda despite being bright orange.

So, that’s Scotland. The fol­low­ing are stories that have re­cently ap­peared on the front page of the the BBC’s page of Scottish news. They are im­pec­ca­bly news­wor­thy all.

William’s uni­ver­sity fails quiz challenge
“The Scot­tish uni­ver­sity won the contest in 1983 and a uni­ver­sity spokes­woman said this year’s per­for­mance was no re­flec­tion of the future prospects of the team members.”

Asian market cheers whisky producers
“Taking this into account, they said a more rep­re­sen­ta­tive figure would be that from June 2000 to June 2001, which puts volume up 8% and value up 6%.”

University counts cost of fire damage
“Professor Sir Graeme Davies said that a sub­stan­tial amount of re­search had been lost in the fire. But he stressed that students’ work will not be ad­versely affected.”

Ads boost for Scotch beef
“Quality Meat Scotland, the body which pro­motes beef, lamb and pork, says the cam­paign is needed as sales have con­tin­ued to fall despite the ex­cel­lent rep­u­ta­tion of Scot­tish meat.”

(To make sense of some of the stories you need to know that Henry McLeish is the First Min­is­ter of Scotland.)

P.S. I do love Scot­land dearly. The reason I am oc­ca­sion­ally reading Scot­tish news stories is that I want to go live in Ed­in­burgh next year. Scot­land really does have character; it’s those in­ter­fer­ing south­ern­ers at the BBC who make it seem not so.